invites you to the fifth, sixth and seventh of its interdisciplinary seminars in the special
series "Foundations". In this series, that starts this semester but continuous
on into next year, CLEA invites scholars that are actively engaged
in the research on the foundations of a particular discipline. The lecture shall
always be directed to an interdisciplinary audience, and the discussions
aim at confronting the foundations of the different disciplines.
Friday, May 10 at 5 pm in room (building , nd floor)
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Campus Oefenplein.
About the lecture:
Economic systems are often described in terms of their mix of two perceived opposites: free-market competition and planned exchanges. In a new approach to economics, based on bounded rationality and transaction costs, this contradiction is overcome. This also explains the emergence of collective rules and institutions and thus fills a gap in neo-classical economic theory. In this approach, perfect competition and rigourous planning become two extreme ideal-types of interaction between agents that can never exist in reality because of bounded rationality.
About the speaker:
BERTIN MARTENS works as an economist for the European Commission.
His domains of experience include macro-economics, structural adjustment programmes for developing economies and development aid issues.
He is currently on sabbatical leave, working under the CLEA-umbrella on bounded rationality models to simulate economic and social development.
and in French
Monday, May 20 at 5 pm in room
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Campus Oefenplein.
La lecture:
Le Vide et le Bruit partagent au XXème siècle une destinée commune, celle de passer d'un statut de négativité à un statut de positivité, leur faisant occuper le devant la scène.
De la même manière que le Vide n'est plus le Rien, de Bruit et le Chaos ne sont plus la simple absence d'Ordre.
La Physique Quantique découvre même la notion de Bruit du Vide, dont il reste à démontrer le caractère objectif et le rôle dans de nombreux phénomènes, en particulier en Optique Quantique. De l'origine de l'Univers aux Technologies Quantiques de la Communication, Vide et Bruit affirment leurs multiples complicités.
Le conférencier:
Prof. Dr. SIMON DINER est Directeur de Recherche au CNRS à Paris. Il travaille à l'Institut de Biologie-Physico Chimique où il a mené des recherches en Chimie Quantique et développe des conceptions pour la création d'une Cybernétique Moléculaire.
Il participe aux activités multiples de la Fondation Louis de Broglie dans le cadre de l'étude des fondements de la Mécanique Quantique.
Il a participé aux recherches sur l'Electrodynamique Stochastique, tentative pour faire jouer un rôle classique à un champ fluctuant du Vide, dans l'espoir de développer une théorie alternative à la Mécanique Quantique.
Friday, June 7 at 5 pm in room (building , nd floor)
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Campus Oefenplein.
About the lecture:
The origins of language is one of the most fascinating unresolved topics of science today. This talk introduces a novel approach and a novel methodology. It is hypothesized that language originated spontaneouslythrough robotic experimentsand autonomously once the appropriate physiological and societal conditions were present. The spontaneous formation is based on general mechanisms for complexity formation also found in other areas of biology, such as co-evolution, self-organisation, and level-formation. The methodology used to test this hypothesis consists in performing computational and robotic experiments that attempt to re-enact the origins of language and meaning in artificial systems. Some concrete experiments will be presented that illustrate the spontaneous formation of an adaptive lexicon, the (co-)evolution of an emergent phonology, and the grounding of spatial descriptions in robotic experiences.
About the speaker:
Prof. Dr. LUC STEELS is a professor of computer science at the VUB and director of the VUB Artificial Intelligence Laboratory which he founded in 1993. He studied linguistics and philosophy at the University of Antwerp and computer science and artificial intelligence at MIT. He published a dozen books in the different areas of artificial intelligence, ranging from AI programming and knowledge engineering, to situated robotics and intelligent agents.
The presentations with questions will last about an hour. Afterwards, an hour or more is reserved for an in-depth, group discussion of the topic. Sandwiches will be served during the break.
More info at the CLEA office: phone ++32-02-629 33 73 (afternoon)
or via the Web-page: http://cleamc11.vub.ac.be/CLEA/